The Supply Chain Workarounds That Can Stop a Production Line Artwork

Resilient Supply Chain — How Leaders Keep Business Moving

Resilient Supply Chain is for supply chain, operations, procurement and technology leaders who need practical ways to manage disruption, reduce risk and keep business moving.

Each Monday, technology and sustainability analyst, keynote speaker and former SAP Global VP Tom Raftery speaks with the executives, operators, founders and innovators redesigning how goods, information and decisions move through global supply chains.

These are candid conversations about what works in practice—not polished PR narratives or vague predictions. Guests explain how they are responding to supplier failures, geopolitical shocks, volatile costs, capacity constraints, changing regulations and rising pressure to improve both performance and sustainability.

The podcast examines:
Faster planning and decision-making under uncertainty
Supplier risk, sourcing strategy and business continuity
AI, automation, visibility and operational intelligence
Warehousing, logistics and fulfilment performance
Scope 3 emissions, circularity and responsible sourcing
The systems, incentives and organisational changes needed to turn data into action

The central question is simple: what helps a supply chain withstand disruption, adapt quickly and continue serving the business?

New episodes are published every Monday at 7am CET. Resilient Supply Chain+ subscribers also receive bonus analysis, highlights and briefings on emerging industry trends.

Follow Resilient Supply Chain for practical lessons from the people solving real operational problems—and building supply chains that perform when conditions do not go to plan.

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Resilient Supply Chain — How Leaders Keep Business Moving

The Supply Chain Workarounds That Can Stop a Production Line

October 05, 2026 • Tom Raftery • Season 2 • Episode 143

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A production line can go down because two people are passing an Excel file back and forth with no audit trail. That is the uncomfortable reality behind this episode: some of the biggest supply-chain risks sit inside ordinary workarounds that nobody questions because, until they fail, they appear to work.

My guest is Patrick Van Hull, now an Agentic Operations Consultant at Salesforce and, when we recorded this conversation, an Industry Consultant at Tungsten Automation. Drawing on experience across companies including Dell, Rio Tinto, Apple and CVS Health, Patrick has seen how document flows, manual hand-offs and disconnected processes can create delays, downtime and business interruption far beyond the back office.

We examine why automating a broken process can simply make the inefficiency faster, why a single inbound supply chain can involve more than 30 documents, and what frontline teams know that formal process maps often miss. We also challenge the assumption that an AI strategy should come before clarity about the work itself — and ask where human judgement still matters most.

Listen now to understand where hidden workflow risk enters your supply chain — and what to fix before you automate it.

If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

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